Historical Romance
by Awkward Markie
Summary: Serena is enjoying her tour of England when she is suddenly transported to the past, where her knowledge of history must keep her alive while she searches for the way home and tries not to fall in love with the man she will have to leave behind.
1. Prologue

TITLE: Historical Romance

AUTHOR: Dream Catcher

DISCLAIMERS: Insert usual stuff here

A.N.: Originally, this story took place in Scotland, and those of you who read the first prologue for this story will undoubtedly be wondering WTF. For the most part, this is a completely different story, but the main plot is still the same. This story will also be slightly more serious than my usual writings, and depending on your preference, this may be a good thing or a bad thing. "Online Confessions…" is still in the works and WILL be completed one day. In fact, chapter seven is about ¾ completed.

Prologue

The kids were starting to get bored, Serena realized as her eyes swept over her students, one of which was trying to hide the fact he was playing a game on his cell phone rather than paying attention to the tour guide. The others were shuffling from one foot to another, gazing blankly at the old walls of the English manor in which they stood.

Although the house had been carefully preserved and restored to its original glory, cracks still ran up the plaster walls near the ceiling, splitting the honey-yellow wall paint like the lines in the palm of someone's hand. The floorboards creaked under the weight of the forty-odd American high school students and the nine chaperones all supporting matching T-shirts, and as everyone moved into the hall, Serena could hear the sighs of her students over the soft thumping of their shoes on the floor.

"We are about to enter the ballroom," the tour guide smiled cheerfully as she waved her hand in the style of Vanna White at the double doors just behind her. The dress she wore, cut to the style of the early nineteenth century, rustled about her waist as she turned to open the door. The thick fabric looked hot and rough to the skin, and Serena felt sorry for the woman. "Please, do not touch anything," the guide said, turning the handle.

The class filed in behind the woman, who moved to stand in the middle of the spacious room. "This," she stated, "is the pride and glory of Terra Manor."

As the tour guide spoke, Serena took in circumference of the round room, the walls of which were covered with a mural of a forest, which, Serena mused, must have made the dancers feel like they were dancing in a faerie ring in the middle of a forest. She wondered if, a hundred years ago, the women dancing in the room had felt the urge to go out and pick flowers to weave together to make crowns and necklaces.

The ceiling was as blue as the sky on a clear spring Montana day. Whoever had commissioned the painting of the room, Serena mused, had certainly been a fanciful and romantic person.

"However, tragedy befell Terra Manor in this very room," the guide theatrically told them. "A woman was murdered at ball held here shortly—just a few weeks, in fact—after the manor caught on fire in 1816."

"Why was the woman murdered?" asked Kindra, one of Serena's more vocal students, but it seemed as though a lot more of the students were listening since the topic of murder was mentioned.

The guide smiled, warming to her subject. "There are many stories speculating the murderer's motive. Some say that the man who murdered the woman was a scorned lover. Others say that the man had too much to drink that night and pulled out his pistol to show off at bit and then accidentally pulled the trigger, his stray bullet killing the women. The most popular story, however, is that the bullet was actually intended for the lord of the manor and that the woman stepped into the path of the bullet to protect the lord."

"Why would she do a stupid thing like that?" asked another student.

"It's said that she was in love with him."

A male student snorted, causing a few others to chuckle.

"It is said that after the woman's death, the lord—an earl, actually—became forlorn. He did, however, later marry a lovely woman that he met while traveling in Scotland. To this day, this house is still privately owned by the descendents of that lord. The family currently lives on the top floor, which is why that area of the house is off-limits to tourists."

"People actually live here?" one student asked, and Serena smiled, trying to imagine the people living on the top floor.

Did they ever peek out the windows or sneak downstairs to join a tour group just to watch the tourist ogle their house? Serena wondered. That's what she'd do, she decided, if she lived in such a house. She also wanted to know what happened at night, when all the tourists were gone. Did the owners make use of the lower floors of the house? Did they sit in the scroll-footed chairs in the foyer? Did they dance while someone played the piano in the ballroom? Did the living room become a family room after the strangers vacated it?

Did the manor ever become a home?

"If you would all direct your attention to the painting to my left," the guide urged, shifting her body to her in the direction indicated, "you will see a painting of the lord and his Scottish wife."

Serena turned her gaze to the painting in mild curiosity and gave the figures a cursory glance.

"Man, to live two-hundred years ago," whispered Mina, Serena's coworker. "That man is simply gorgeous."

Serena nodded her agreement as she stared at the two figures captured forever in oil paint.

"Do you think he really looked like that, or do you think it was an exaggeration on the painter's part?"

Serena studied the male figure more closely since it was the object of her friend's attention. The lord was dark haired and imposing. He had an almost wild air about him even though he looked perfectly domesticated in tan breeches and a blue jacket that amplified the color of his eyes. His skin was golden, and a thin scar above one of his eyebrows stood out because of its paleness. The man looked stoic in his facial expression, and his stiff posture indicated that he was either a man who was extremely uptight or extremely alert. Serena thought it was probably the latter, but despite his rigidity, the hand resting on the shoulder of the seated woman appeared extremely gentle. At first glance, Serena thought the focus of the man's gaze was on the viewer, but after a few moments it seemed as though he were gazing out of the corner of his eye at the woman.

"You know what?" Mina asked, rhetorically, "The woman kind of looks like you."

Serena focused her attention on the woman in the painting who was of obvious Scottish lineage. Her skin was fair, a pure cream that lacked the pink that tinted Serena's epidermis. The woman had green eyes and hair that was a wavy copper red, and Serena, a blue-eyed blonde, did not see the resemblance and she said as much to Mina.

"I mean," Mina tried to explain, "if your hair was red, and your eyes a little closer together, you could pass as her sister."

Serena sighed. "Mina, you're delusional."

Mina narrowed her eyes at the portrait. "There's just something…I think it may be her expression. You wear that same smile when you are happy for no apparent reason."

"Happy for no apparent reason? How do you know if I'm happy for no apparent reason?"

"You get this smile sometimes. I ask you why you are smiling, and you say 'No reason.' That's why."

Serena's mouth twitched, but she refused to smile, afraid that Mina would make some comment about its likeness to the woman in the painting. Instead, she glanced back at the former lord of Terra Manor and the gentle hand he placed on his wife's shoulder and amusingly thought that the woman in the painting had at least one reason to be smiling.

Serena began to feel herself slip into the place in her mind where she turned history into fictional stories and turned names in textbooks into characters that embodied the personalities she imposed upon them, thus making them more realistic to Serena, who had always felt that historical figures, like George Washington and Harriet Tubman, were described in textbooks in terms of what they had done and not who they had been. Yes, actions say a lot about a person, by how was Serena supposed to believe that the people in history books were once real people when they were portrayed as so two dimensional and when she knew nothing about their personalities that she could relate to?

She was prevented from entering that world, however, by the tour guide who asked the bored students, "Alright, who's ready to tour the garden maze?"

Few gave a response to the woman's question, and those that did answer did so in mumbles and grunts.

Serena shared a look with Mina and asked, "I wonder how many of them we'll lose in the maze."

"I wonder how many of them we'll catch making out," Mina responded in a whisper. "I swear these kids get more action than me."

"That's because they do."

A slightly offended Mina came back with, "Well I at least get more than you."

Serena shrugged, not offended by Mina's comment. There was no arguing with the truth. Serena's last relationship had been almost two years ago, and the fact was, she was comfortable being single. While she enjoyed intimacy with men, she didn't miss it to the same degree that Mina did. She was perfectly content to read romance books and eat chocolate, whereas Mina seemed to desperately need the comfort of a male body.

Once outside, the walls of the maze garden rose eight feet into the sky. At the sight of them, Serena couldn't help but smile in glee; she had always wanted to experience getting lost in a maze and then trying to find her way out. Now she had her chance.

Eager to enter the garden, Serena barely heard the tour guide as she concluded, "Well, I hope you all enjoyed the tour of Terra Manor. Please visit us again if you ever return to England."

The guide, then turned and left, her skirt swishing as she walked up the stone steps and into the back door of the manor.

Daniel Mathews, the head of the history department at the school where Serena taught, directed everyone's attention towards him by emitting a loud whistle using his thumb and forefinger. "Alright, everyone, we're going into the maze and I ask that you not get lost on purpose. I know that you are bound to take some wrong turns, but this isn't hide-and-seek. We have a schedule to keep, and if you guys want to eat on time I suggest that you get through the maze as quickly as possible. If I or one of the other teachers find any of you goofing off you can bet your bottom that you will be punished, so get in there and get out."

"Hey, Mina," Serena elbowed Mina once most of the students had entered the maze, "I bet I can get out before you." Then, almost before her sentence was out of her mouth, she started running for the maze entrance, bypassing a few straggling students who had yet to enter the garden.

The sounds of the outside world were muted inside the walls of the maze, and Serena stopped her running to pause and listen. Faintly, she could hear the giggling of the students and the sound of birds nesting in the shrub walls around her. Her breathing, slightly elevated from her brief run, was the loudest sound inside the vacuum of the maze.

Smiling, Serena picked up her pace, turned a corner, and entered deeper into the heart the maze. She held her right hand out at her side, letting her fingers trail across the leaves of the perfectly trimmed and flattened bushes.

It wasn't until she had made six more rights and four lefts that she realized something was wrong. Not only had she not reached the end of the maze, but her breathing, which should have returned to its normal steady tempo, was still heavy. In fact, it seemed to have increased in severity, coming in and out of her lungs in wheezes.

Confused, she clutched her chest and throat, vaguely wondering if she was having an asthma attack even though she did not have a history of asthmatic problems. Her next thought was that she was having a panic attack, but she had never had a problem with those either. Serena tried to call out for help but couldn't find the breath, and a cough emerged from her throat rather than a plea for help.

With her back against the wall of the maze, Serena slid to the ground, tiny branches scratching the backs of her arms, as she felt her head grow both light and heavy at the same time. Short, panicked thoughts darted through her mind as her neck struggled to support her head.

Please, I don't want to die, she pleaded in her mind as she listed to one side and felt the side of her body touch ground, her eyes staring at the sky and the white cotton-candy clouds.

As child, she used to believe that when people died their souls shrunk to the size of ants before traveling to Heaven, which was located inside clouds. But Serena didn't feel as though she were shrinking. Instead, she felt as though she were growing, as though she were too big for her skin. She felt trapped, tight, and helpless.

The wind started to blow, and Serena felt her body shudder. Dreamily, she looked on as the sky turned from blue to pink and the clouds began to swirl in an unnatural pattern, becoming one giant mass that seemed to descend from the sky to clog her pupils and obscure her vision. She felt the clouds spread to the rest of her body, coating her in a soft numbness that alleviated the pressure in her chest and left her immobile. She was aware of them lulling her into unconsciousness, and Serena fought the sensation, afraid that if she gave up the clouds would leave her body and take her soul with them.

When Serena finally succumbed, the clouds did not take her to the after life. Instead, they transported her to a place where she no longer had to use her imagination to make history come to life.

AN.: Thanks for reading! I would love some feedback, especially since this is somewhat different from my usual writing style.


	2. Chapter One

A.N: It has been a while, I know. This chapter was actually written many years ago, before I took my hiatus from fanfiction writing. After a recent renewed interest in fanfiction writing, I went through some old files and found this chapter. While I can't guarantee that I will finish this story now that I have tentatively returned to the world of Sailor Moon fanfiction, I felt that this chapter deserved to be put out on the interwebs. I hope everyone enjoys it.

Chapter One

The first thing Serena became aware of, besides the throbbing in her head, was the object caught in her hair. Whatever it was, it weighed very little and moved slightly in a net made of Serena's blond strands as she breathed in and out. As it shifted, it lightly brushed against her nose, not quite scratching her skin but not tickling it either.

She cracked her eyes then quickly closed them when the bright sunshine caused her brain to throb in protest but not before she saw that it was a leaf caught in her hair. After she took a few deep breaths in an effort to ease the throbbing in her head, she realized that the pain in her chest was gone. Whatever had happened to her, she realized, she had lived through it.

Testing, she tried to call out. Her voice was weak, but it didn't hurt like it had when she had tried to call for help before she had lost consciousness. Surely, people would be looking for her now and would be nearby to hear her. Surely.

Minutes passed and no one came, so she tried again, this time louder. "Someone, help!" She kept her eyes closed, listening for signs of another person.

Instead of a human, however, aid came in the form of a canine, a big lumbering dog with a loud bark and a long tongue that licked Serena's face and coated her in slobber. She tried to flinch away, but the dog was persistent.

"Go away," Serena mumbled, forgetting that the dog's loud bark could be her saving grace. Instead, Serena wished that she could close her ears like she could close her eyes and mouth because the dog's deep barks were causing sharp stabs of pain to shoot through her head.

She was just about to risk moving her arm to shove the beast away when she heard signs of another human, a masculine voice being drawn to her location because of the dog's incessant barking. Relieved, Serena's body closed itself off to the dog's calls, to the leaves, and to the conscious world.

Eli Tucker's job, among many other things, was to walk Henry, the Lord's dog, when the Lord was not inclined to do so. Fortunately for Eli, Henry did not live up to his namesake Henry VIII. Instead, the dog was a real fool, too stupid to even know how to cock his leg to take a piss.

It was in Eli's opinion—not that anyone seemed to care—that Lord Roberts himself was to blame for the dog's behavior. Had the Lord not allowed his younger sisters to coddle the mutt from the time it was just a pup, then Henry would have turned into mighty fine hunting dog even if his nose was not from pure stock.

As was custom, Eli had let Henry run off ahead of him, knowing the dog would run midways into the field to do his business before sniffing every bush around and doing his business again. Eli liked to follow at a slower pace, figuring he couldn't urge to the dog to go any faster.

Ahead of him, he could hear Henry barking—probably at his own tail, Eli thought.

"Damn fool dog," Eli muttered as he ambled around a rock jutting from the ground. "I swear I'd 'ave killed 'im by now if 'e were no' the Lord's."

Squinting against the sun, he tried to locate the dog and spotted him a few yards away, prancing in a circle and barking at what Eli reckoned was probably an empty mole hole.

"Come 'ere, dog," Eli called. "Come 'ere."

Henry, however, ignored Eli and continued to bark at the ground. As Eli drew closer to the dog, he began to see the form lying amongst the overgrown grass that was bigger than any mole Eli had ever seen.

Lord Damien Roberts, Earl of Mowray was in the drawing room with his sisters when his steward entered, an apology immediately bursting from his lips.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, My Lord, but there is a matter that I feel needs your attending, immediately," he added after a brief glance at Damien's two sisters, who sat comfortably side by side on the sofa, cups of tea clutched delicately in their hands.

"Are you sure it cannot wait, Andrew?" Raychel, the eldest of Damien's younger sisters asked. "I have wanted to discuss the plans for Holly's party with Damien for a week now, but he has been so busy. Now that he finally has time to speak with me, you must call him away? Are you so sure?"

Andrew bowed slightly in Raychel's direction, "I'm sorry, My Lady, but I would not have otherwise disturbed the lord."

Raychel pursed her lips, but said nothing.

"What is the situation, Andrew? I will decide if it is important," Damien sighed.

The last thing he wanted was to spend time with his sisters discussing plans for the party they wished to hold in a few weeks' time, but Damien knew that if he left in the middle of Raychel's planning there would be hell to pay later and he'd rather suffer minor torture now than losing a limb later.

"One of the stable workers, My Lord, was out walking Henry when he found a…" Andrew trailed off and cleared his throat, pausing to direct a glance at the females present in the room. Damien gave an impatient nod, and Andrew continued cautiously, "He found a body, Sir, on the grounds."

Holly gasped, her eyes growing wide. Raychel, however, slammed her teacup onto her saucer and set both hastily on the table in front of her. "A body? As in a dead body? That's absurd!"

Ignoring his sister's outburst, Damien rose to his feet, approached Andrew, and demanded, "Lead me to it."

A few minutes later, Damien was fallowing Andrew across the expansive field behind the manor, the tall grass rustling against his boots. He saw ahead of him a small group of servants gathered around a spot in the field where the body was located.

Wondering which of his servants had drunk himself to death, Damien increased his pace slightly even though he knew there was nothing he could do now other than arrange for the body to be moved and summon a priest to give the man his last rights.

As Damien approached, the small group stopped their gawking long enough to part and allow Damien through. Damien, who had been expecting to find one of his older servants lying on the ground, was surprised when he caught his first glimpse of the slight figure sprawled in the grass.

"Andrew, you did not tell me it was a woman."

"I thought it best not to say so in front of your sisters, My Lord. I thought it might upset them."

Damien didn't argue; Raychel's reaction had been strong enough without her knowing that the body was female.

"Did anyone recognize her?" He asked Andrew, crouching beside the body. He didn't smell the odor of alcohol, and doubted the woman had indulged herself in the spirits.

"No, Sir, but she is on her belly, and her hair is in her face."

"Why hasn't anyone turned her over?"

"I think they're afraid to touch her."

Damien didn't reply. Instead, he caught himself staring at the clothes the woman was wearing. She was dressed like a man in a pair of strange trousers and an equally odd top with short, loose sleeves. And her shoes! They were the most peculiar set of footwear Damien had ever seen.

As his eyes roamed over the woman's attire, Damien also took note of how well the fabric revealed her figure. It was an admirable figure, too, Damien noticed, and he began to wonder if it was perhaps the reason she had ended up dead and in his field.

Did some man try to have his way with her? he speculated sadly, as he reached out to gently turn her over.

The woman emitted a groan, shocking Damien to the point he almost gasped. Hastily, Damien finished turning the woman onto her back in time to see her eyelids twitch.

Behind him, Andrew made the sign of the cross. "Dear, Lord! She was alive the whole time!"

Nodding grimly, Damien scooped the girl into his arms and stood with her face pressed against his chest.

"What will you do with her, My Lord?"

"Take her inside, of course. Prepare one of the guest rooms for her, Andrew. I have a feeling she will be spending the night in our company."

As Damien marched towards the manor, he glanced down at woman in his arms, his brows drawing together as he once again took in the woman's appearance. She was comely, but her choice of clothing caused her to resemble an oddly dressed little boy. He also found it peculiar that there was writing on her top that declared "CROSSROADS HIGH IS LEARNING IN LONDON." How had the words come to be on her shirt? They did not resemble any cross stitch technique he had ever seen.

Damien's sisters were waiting for him at the door when arrived back at the manor, and both Holly and Raychel gasped when they saw the feminine form in his arms.

"Is she really—"

"No, Holly," Damien assured his youngest sister, "she is alive, but I need to set her down somewhere comfortable. Could you perhaps go retrieve a blanket for me? I'm going to lay her down on the sofa."

"But, Damien, the sofa was imported from—"

Damien ignored Raychel, and as he ordered the nearest servant to fetch the doctor, he placed the blonde on the cushions and moved aside so that his sister Holly could cover the girl with a blanket.

Raychel looked on disapprovingly, her lips pursed. "Do not touch her, Holly. God knows what filth she's slept in."

"But she's so pretty," Holly argued, studiously gazing at the woman's features. Silently, Damien agreed as he became somewhat annoyed with Raychel's words.

The blonde was obviously a woman of means. Her skin was clean, and her hands were soft, devoid of calluses. If it were not for her strange clothing, and the few leaves and grasses clinging to her in various locations, he would have expected to see her at any of the many social functions that he occasionally attended out of obligation towards his sister.

Damien turned away from the sofa as Holly began to tuck the blanket around the woman and focused his attention on the nearest window. One of his men rode a chocolate mare hard down the path that led to the main road and to the nearest doctor.

How on earth did the woman end up on his property? he wondered, mindlessly noting the dust cloud that followed the horseman and captured the fading rays of the descending sun. The plumes of dirt appeared orange and purple in the late afternoon light, and as Damien gazed at them, he was reminded of the waves that churned at a ship's bow as it cut its way through the ocean.

Holly's sudden intake of breath jerked Damien from his musings and caused him to spin around and face the sofa to find his youngest sister covering her mouth with a hand in surprise and the formerly unconscious woman sitting up, her blue eyes wide and searching.

Serena awoke expecting to find herself in the sterile antiseptic environment of a hospital with familiar faces anxiously hovering over her, wanting to know if she felt better. The room she found herself in, however, had neither white walls nor a cheap framed print depicting a field of daisies hanging nearby in a feeble attempt to give the room character.

Instead, Serena had been deposited on a couch that looked as though it should have been covered in the same plastic her grandmother had once used to cover her furniture in order to keep it protected from cat hair and the many food spills of her klutzy grandchildren, but Serena's skin was directly touching the upholstery. She moved her fingers slightly and felt the stitches that gave the sofa color and pattern.

The people in the room with Serena were complete strangers, and all three of them stared at her in various degrees of curiosity. Sunlight was shining through a nearby window, causing her eyes to squint as she tried to get a clear view of the room's other occupants, but the features of the masculine figure standing closest to the window were shadowed because the man's body blocked the light that would have illuminated his face.

"Where am I?" Serena asked, her lips sticking together with the same clear film that often covered her lips after a night of sleeping with her mouth wide open. Annoyed with the feeling, she dragged her right index finger across her lips to remove the gluey substance. Then, in what she hoped was a discrete manner, she wiped her finger along the outside seam of her jeans as she waited for someone to answer her question.

"Terra Manor," was the accented reply of the man near the window.

Serena glanced around the room again, not recognizing any of the furniture or wall hangings. Rationally, she deduced that she had probably been placed in a room away from the tour groups for privacy, and it was likely that an ambulance was on it's way to pick her up to take her to the hospital. However, as she continued to gaze at the perimeter, she couldn't help but think that there was something oddly familiar about the shape of the room and the small fireplace to her left.

Silence filled the room, and Serena continued to awkwardly examine her surroundings, not quite sure how to break the stillness. She wanted to know what had happened to her, but she didn't feel comfortable asking questions about her condition when they were complete strangers. A part of Serena wanted to panic. What had happened to her? Did she have a heart attack? Wasn't she too young for heart problems?

Too many questions ran through her mind, and Serena began to suspect that she would go crazy if her mind remained cluttered with thoughts. To subdue the panic that was slowly building within her, she broke the silence.

"It was weird," she stammered unsurely. "I had some sort of attack. I don't know what it was. Do you know what happened to me? Did a doctor examine me?"

She proposed her questions to the man in shadows because it comforted her to imagine that he was a sympathetic person with a baby face who would tell her in soft accented tone that she was fine, that her little spell in the garden maze had been a fluke, nothing more.

The man's shoulders, however, tensed and he tersely asked, "Attack? Did someone attack you?"

Shocked by the sudden forcefulness of his voice, Serena flinched as she replayed the man's question in her mind. Had someone attacked her? Why would he think that she had been attacked?

Serena glanced at the other two women in the room. Both of them were obviously tour guides for their manor since their dresses were styled for a time long before her grandmother's lifetime. Neither of them was the guide that had led her through the house, and Serena found herself missing the familiar face of the woman who had perkily given Serena and her troupe of students their tour.

Still confused, she returned her attention to the man and asked, "Was I attacked? No, of course not."

Frustration filled every syllable of the voice that asked, "Then what happened to you?"

That seemed to be the million dollar question, and Serena desperately wished she had the answer.

She tried to keep her panic at bay as she told the man, "I'm not really sure. One minute I was wandering through the maze and the next I couldn't breathe."

She expected him to express some form of detached concern for her health that only a stranger could give. Maybe he would recognize having seen the same symptoms in a relative or friend and suggest the same diagnosis that had been given to his friend.

Instead, the man latched onto a completely different topic. "Maze?"

Serena didn't know whether to scream or cry. Why did this man seem so completely oblivious to her obvious turmoil? Serena was growing increasingly worried that she had a serious health problem, and he wanted to talk about mazes! Did the man possess a sympathetic cell in his body?

Sucking in air, Serena tried to control her emotions. If she had really had a heart attack, high blood pressure would not improve the problem. "Yes, you know, the garden maze out back?" she asked with undisguised sarcasm.

Sarcasm, she discovered, kept the tears at bay.

"You must be confused, Miss. There is no maze on my property."

Serena wondered if she had imagined the haughtiness in his voice.

"Your property? You own Terra Manor?" she asked without thinking, a numbness settling in her mind as she gazed at the man whose features still remained in shadows as though he were a movie villain whose identity isn't revealed until the last scene.

"Of course he does. He's the eighth earl of Mowbray.

Surprised by the sharp feminine voice, Serena jerked her attention towards the woman standing the farthest away from her. The woman's hostile tone matched her expression, and Serena flinched when she met the hard stare of the woman's blue-violet eyes.

Under normal circumstances, Serena would have described the woman as being beautiful with her exotic combination of coal-black hair, fair skin, and light blue eyes; but the woman's menacing gaze and pursed red lips made her appear intimidating, like the imaginary monsters that Serena used to be afraid of when she was five.

Serena averted her gaze, catching sight of the much friendlier face of the younger girl who stood next to the sofa within arms reach from Serena. Because the second girl was closer, Serena had to crane her neck slightly to view her face, and when Serena took the time to really look at the girl, she was shocked to notice the similarity between the girl's features and those of the threatening woman near the fireplace.

In the back of her mind, Serena realized that the two must be sisters, but her primary thoughts had already circled around back to the fact that the man was the owner of Terra Manor.

"I'm sorry," Serena said not quite sure why she was apologizing. "I didn't know."

The man nodded, and suddenly Serena found him completely absurd. Maybe, she thought with some humor, he is aware of the fact that she could not see his face. Maybe he's doing it on purpose to retain his Mysterious Man of the Manor persona.

Serena felt laughter bubbling within her, and desperately tried to squelch it; she was afraid it would burst forth from her mouth in peels of hysterics. She was afraid that if she started, she would never stop, but she suddenly found her whole situation humorous. First, she lost consciousness in the middle of a maze. Then she woke up in the middle of a room surrounded by an evil dragon lady, a shy girl, and a man who remains obscured by shadows.

The man had yet to move from his position by the window, and Serena idly wondered if his face would remain obscured even after he moved away from his spot. Would he be like the character Wilson from the television show "Home Improvement" whose face was always obscured by a fence, a menu, a book, or some other random item?

Again, Serena suppressed the urge to laugh, knowing her companions would find no humor in her thoughts. Mina would find it funny, though, she mused silently.

Then she was reminded of something she should have thought of long before. "Uhm, where is my group?"

"Group?" Shadow man asked, shifting slightly, and Serena, in her crazed state almost wanted to get up and jerk him closer so she could see his face.

"Yes, the group of students I was chaperoning. They're all wearing shirts like mine." Serena tugged on neck of her T-shirt. "You can't miss them."

"Oh for God's sake, Damien, there is obviously something wrong with this girl!" the dragon woman exclaimed.

Fear caused Serena's heart to thump heavily beneath her ribcage. "What's wrong with me? Am I sick?"

Shadow Man ignored the woman, and answered Serena, his voice laced with frustration again. "As far as I know, you are perfectly healthful, but that does not explain why I found you unconscious in the middle of a field."

"Field? I was never in a field," Serena stated confused, as she began to marvel the over the journey her emotions had taken in the last twenty minutes. She'd gone from scared to confused, to frustrated, to hysterics, to amused, and back to confused again. Emotional roller coaster was almost an understatement.

"That is where I found you," he stated simply.

Then, Serena's emotions took another turn, this time towards shock as the man finally moved away from the window and closer to Serena, revealing a face that should have been completely foreign to her. She had never met the man, and yet Serena recognized his every feature down to the tiny scar over his eyebrow.

The man standing in front of her had lived two hundred years ago, and, logically, he should be dead by now.

Impossible, Serena thought, gazing at his hard features, but Serena could not deny the fact that the man in front of her was a real human. A painter could not capture the detail she was seeing. Never mind the fact that he was moving and breathing and three dimensional.

Then Serena fleetingly wondered the most absurd thing. Had she traveled back in time?

Almost as soon as the thought flitted through her mind she dismissed it and replaced it with a more logical answer to her situation.

She was being scammed.

She just knew that these people were playing her for the dumb American traveler. Somehow, they expected to swindle her out of all of her money. Maybe they already had her passport, license, and cash in their possession.

She remembered reading a story in her ninth grade English class back when she had been in high school. It had been about a wandering traveler who'd come upon a small house surrounded by bamboo. Inside, the inhabitants of the home had offered him tea, which, unknowingly to the man, had been laced with something to put him to sleep.

When the man had awoken afterwards in the woods, he stumbled upon the same home, which seemed to have aged tremendously, and inside the home the people appeared fifty years older. The people then offered to give him the name of another man who had claimed to have gone through the same phenomenon for a price. The man would have fallen for the ploy had he not realized, upon approaching the home for the second time, that the bamboo surrounding the building had not grown to the height it should have been had fifty years truly passed.

Perhaps the people in front of her had read the same story and thought they could trick her out of her money if they could convince Serena into believing she had traveled back in time.

Obviously the painting was a fake, meant to further convince the victims of this scam that they had gone back in time. The man's face was certainly memorable, and anyone who had taken the tour was bound to remember the face in the painting. Serena bet that the man's "Scottish wife" would appear soon to round out the con.

Serena, however, decided not to wait for the redheaded woman to make an appearance, and instead chose to trap them with their lies by asking, "Can you show me where you found me?"

Surely, if it had worked for the man, then it would work for her. If she had indeed traveled back in time—which she highly doubted—then the surrounding foliage would be different.

The man shrugged and commanded, "Follow me."

Serena glanced at the other two women in the room. The youngest just shrugged her shoulders while the older woman pursed her lips so tightly together that Serena expected them to be purple the next day with bruises, a thought that made her want to smile.

When she turned her face again in the direction of the man, she found him standing beneath the arch of the doorway, looking at her over his shoulder. One of his eyebrows was cocked as if to say, "Are you coming?"

Serena cautiously stood and found her legs steady beneath her weight, but she was still timid in her first few steps out of the room, afraid that she would collapse again.

The man turned and began leading her through the house, his shoulders stiff beneath the fabric of his outdated attire. Serena padded behind him, her tennis shoes a soft thumping masked by the louder step of his hard-soled boots.

A sense of superiority washed over Serena as she began to form a script in her mind of what she would tell the man once she found enough evidence to undisputedly reveal the con. He'll be so pissed, Serena thought, but Serena knew she would find the most pleasure in the expression that the prude woman would end up wearing.

As she gazed at her surroundings, looking in doors as she passed, Serena realized how much effort the people had put forth to make their scam believable. A few pieces of the furniture that she had seen on the tour were still present, but many of them had been moved to other locations. There were also few paintings on the walls that had not been hanging during the tour, and as odd as it may have seemed, the house seemed fresher and quieter.

Where, Serena wondered, was the low humming of the central air-conditioning that had been installed sometime during the late twentieth century? Apparently, her con artists paid close enough attention to detail to have thought to turn the air off during the duration of their little prank.

And perhaps that was all it was: a prank. Serena doubted that whatever was going on was just the result of planning between a few employees. This was obviously a huge group effort. Hell, the family who still owned the house was probably in on the plan if they could turn off the air, move furniture around, and hide paintings.

Maybe this was a joke orchestrated by Mina to get Serena back for the time she hired the male stripper for Mina's twenty-fifth birthday. Mina had promised retribution and, up until this point in time, Serena had yet to see it. If this was Mina's attempt at getting Serena punk'd, Serena just might have to kill her best friend.

As Serena and the man passed the ballroom, she paused briefly at the open doors. While the forest mural still decorated the walls, the painting of the man and red headed woman was missing, just as she'd expected.

She was led down another familiar hallway before the two of them arrived at the back door, which the man held open as he pointed off to the right.

"I found you in the field over there," he said, his eyelids lowered in an almost lazy look as he waited for her reaction.

But Serena's stomach had already dropped to meet the soles of her tennis shoes. Where the garden maze should have stood there was a field that took up the vast majority of her view. The grass was overgrown and reached the middle of Serena's calves.

Had the grass been freshly cut, Serena knew she would have somehow talked herself into believing that her pranksters had gone to the extent of cutting down the maze in order to get her to believe that she was no longer in the twenty-first century. Serena, being a country girl, knew grass that height got that tall after weeks of neglect, and she highly doubted she'd been asleep that long.

Even as the unbelievable reality of her situation began to sink in, she found herself mumbling, "It's not…It's gone…"

The man, who had been scanning his property, perhaps looking for whatever she had expected to find, turned to her, asking, "What's wrong? Is there someone in the woods?"

She wanted to cry again, she realized, as she shook her head jerkily and asked the only question that seemed appropriate in her situation. "What's today's date?"

Slowly the man answered, "It's the fourth of May."

"And the year?" she asked just as calmly and resigned as before even though she knew she must sound like a lunatic for not knowing the year. "What's the year?"

He gave her a look, his eyebrows lowered and positioned together. Oh, yes, Serena thought with a tiny bit of humor, he thought she was crazy. Regardless, though, he answered her question. "It's the year eighteen-sixteen."

His voice was mellow, almost soothing, and he reached out a hand as if to steady her, ground her, bring her down from the clouds. Serena began to wonder if she was starting to appear as insane as she was beginning to feel.

She had the sudden urge to run, to elbow the man out of her way and just start sprinting for the line of trees on the other side of the field. She wanted to hear the grass crunch beneath her shoes and drag the bottom of her jeans in a sound that was as familiar to her as the sound of her voice.

Back when she was a kid, her main chore during the summer had been to cut the grass, a job she loved to put off until the last minute, when her dad would grumble and tell her to get her ass out on the lawn mower. The grass would get so tall sometimes that dandelions would grow and cover her whole yard in a yellow and green shag carpet, and whenever she went outside, the grass and weeds would hit her legs, softly popping and rustling against her ankles.

Maybe, Serena thought, if I run fast enough, hard enough across that field I'll find the twenty-first century.

She could feel the muscles in her right leg preparing for movement, but then she felt the man's hand touch her arm and heard his voice ask, "Are you well?"

She turned her eyes away from the field to look at his face, the face that Serena would one day look at and attempt to humanize, and with a small almost crazed smile she said, "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore."

Then she took off sprinting towards the field, needing to hear the familiar sound of grass against Sketchers and denim jeans.


End file.
